Rensselaer Republican, Volume 23, Number 39, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 28 May 1891 — ONLY FEW OF THEM LEFT. [ARTICLE]

ONLY FEW OF THEM LEFT.

A Score of Italians Slaughtered in New York State. Terrible Dynamite Explosion on a Work Train Near Tarrytown—Eighteen Men Blown Into Eternity. , Mfhere was a horrible accident near Tarry town, N. Y., on the 19th by which tho loss of iife is estimated aTbetweeri sixteen and twenty and the injured as many more. An engine and flat car were conveying a load of Italians and twenty-four cases of dynamite, each case containing fifty pounds. The Italians were being taken to a section of the road where a third track was being laid. A coil of rope lay in front of the truck of the engine. Just as the train was passing Holmes Point, midway between Tarry town and Irvington,® spark from the locomotive ignited the coil of rope. The moving train fanned the flames and before the Italians realized their danger one of tho packages exploded. Wiliiam Ilrannigan, the engineer of the derrick train, happened to be 150 yards from the train at the time. He tells the following story: “When the coil of rope set fire to the first package one of the men seeing it on fire sprang off the flat car. He Ml under the wheels and was killed. The next moment there was a rumbling noise, a dense cloud of smoke and a flying mass shot lip into the air. Before the explosion some, of the Italians had tumbled off and a few saved their lives by so doing. The train had just about come toastop. Brannigan saw one man blown fifty feet into the air. He fell into the Hudson river. Another man was blown over into the bluff. The others were blown in various dirietions. Several are supposed to have been blown into the river.” The floor, after the removal, looked like the floor of an abattoir. The blood lay all about in- pools. As to the number of men on the train, accounts differ. Some say there were thirty-three, The lowest estimate placed the number at over forty. Disston, the boss, thinks there were over forty, and as a matter of fact the number of those blown either to atoms or in the river is to a certain extent a matter of speculation.

The train was tom to attorns, the railway tracks ripped from their bed, and a great hole many feet deep dug out of the earth, totally blocking the traffic on the road for many hours. Up in Tarrytown, over across the river in Nyack and up and down the stream, the shock was terrible. The ground trembled as though an earthquake had occurred. The walls of several Tarrytown houses were shaken and cracked, and in the Tarrytown streets the window glass fell in showers to the sidewalk. Even over in Nyack heavy panes of glass were smashed. The beautiful houses which line the bank for a mile or more on each side of the scene of the accident all suffered more or less. The hillside with its heavy foliage wa ß scorched and blackened, and here and there heavy limbs of trees were wrenched off as though by a thunderbolt. In Tarrytown scores of clocks stopped, and it is in this way that almost the exact hour of the explosion, 11:20, is fixed. —• The list of dead is now eighteen. Of these thirteen are accounted for, and the remaining five are in the river. Gangs of men in boats are dragging the river for these, but the tide is running so strong that there is little chance of recovering' them. —~~~